


Nice Guys Finish Last (The Left-of-Center Remix)

by voodoochild



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Drugs, Genderswap, Infidelity, Other, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-11
Updated: 2010-04-11
Packaged: 2017-10-08 21:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/79686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paul's always been told he doesn't have what it takes. It doesn't matter, he's got what counts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nice Guys Finish Last (The Left-of-Center Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by ["Barefoot in the Kitchen (The Slightly Off-Center Mix)"](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/426) by Descartes/pop_inc. 



> The original concept for this 'verse belongs to Descartes, whose "Barefoot in the Kitchen (The Slightly Off-Center Mix)" provided the background for this story. Much love, Des, for writing such a brilliant genderswap in the first place, and for letting me play in your sandbox.

1977  
_(growing up in New Hampshire, eight years old)_

"Want a pretty pink tutu, fairyboy?"

All the neighborhood kids pick on him. Sometimes it's just "fairy" - or "string bean", or "the Great Schnozzola" - sometimes it's worse. Sometimes it's words that make Dad go all red in the face and threaten to call their parents. He wants it to stop, but every time he yells back, they just get louder.

Mom tells him to ignore them - they're just trying to get a reaction out of him - and they'll stop it when he doesn't respond. Lynn says boys are stupid and what does he care what Tommy Fairweather says about him? Dad just shakes his head and says if Paul tried to fit in a little more, he wouldn't be teased.

What Dad means is that he should play football and watch the Patriots every Sunday like everyone else in Nashua. Paul hates football. He likes baseball and basketball and watching World Class on Sundays.

He bets Ric Flair doesn't get beaten up for not liking football.

So the next time they push him down in the dirt behind the school gym and call him "princess", he pokes them in the eyes and kicks them in the kneecaps. Just like Ric Flair. He gets detention and extra homework for a week, but it's worth it.

***

1984  
_(first became interested in bodybuilding)_

The first time he tries steroids, it's like becoming Superman.

One of the guys on varsity has them; a few needles at the bottom of his gym bag, passed out to a select group. Paul's fairly sure he's only there because he's lived down the street from the guy for years, plays baseball with his younger brother, but however he's managed to find himself here, there's no going back.

And he doesn't want to, because this feels amazing. He's benching more than he ever has, and Coach Clark said he killed at suicides yesterday. He can feel his body changing, adding muscle, and the juice gives him the stamina he needs to spend hours in the gym, pounding out reps.

He can't get it right just yet; his cutting/bulking cycle is still at the point where he's got a little pudge to his stomach and really thin legs, but he's getting there.

No one's tried to kick his ass in months, not with arms bigger than most people's legs and a good six inches of height to back up his muscle. Better yet is the reaction he's getting from the other guys at the gym. Before, it was disdain (_punk-ass fag thinks he can hack it_). Now, it's approval (_keep it up, kid, looking good_). Apparently, if you lift weights, it doesn't matter who you like to fuck.

It's the first time he feels like he's a part of something special.

***

1987  
_(met Ted Arcidi, switched focus to wrestling)_

"Get outta here," the promoter says, the fifth guy to tell him that this week. "You'll never make it."

It's always the same: _you're just a juiced-up kid. We're not looking to train anyone. Stick to bodybuilding._ But Paul wants to wrestle, wants it more than he's ever wanted anything. He works five nights a week at Wendy's and then chases down every ring crew he can find on the weekends. When a guy at the Factory tells him about a promotion up in Calgary that's blowing up, he quits Wendy's and drives up to Canada.

Stampede Wrestling is chaotic and earsplitting and absolutely amazing. Paul talks his way onto the ring crew, and it's good. It's great. It's everything he wants. He's taking bumps and following the wrestlers around and learning everything he can.

Except.

He still hasn't been in a ring. Not for real. He goes to one of Stu's boys - the youngest, Owen, brilliant kid, going to be a star - before the show one night, as they're putting the ring up.

"Your dad runs that school, right? He teaches people to wrestle."

"Yeah. What about it?"

"I want to join."

Owen looks up, not even bothering to suppress his laughter. "You're shitting me, right? You'd never survive the Dungeon."

"How do you know?"

"Well, for starters, Stu doesn't take junkies," Owen says, waving up at two of his brothers in the stands. "Bret and Dean up there? Dad beat the shit out of them just for smoking joints around back after a show one night."

Paul wraps the duct tape around the ropes, cutting it off and hooking the ropes onto the turnbuckles. "So what the fuck business is it of yours - or his - what I do with my body?"

"You wanna look good under the lights, I get it. But man, you keep up the juice and the pot and the Somas, you'll be dead before you're thirty-five." Owen ties off the turnbuckle pads and motions for him to shoot off the ropes to check the tightness. Great, more welts without anything to show for them. "Go home, Paul. Get a real job. You don't get the business, and I don't think you ever will. I'm not trying to be a dick - I'm just trying to be straight with you."

Paul knows, and he does appreciate it. But now he wants it more than ever.

***

1992  
_(began training with Killer Kowalski)_

Walter's a fucking psychopath, everyone knows this. He's always on about how it was in the old days (_"Een my day, ve walked fifteen miles tru ze snow, trained all day, all night, zen took whatever bumps ze boys gave us, for NO PAY. You do same."_) and he's so cheap, you can hear the pennies in his pockets screaming in pain.

Paul knew what he was getting in for. He told himself he could stick it out, go back up to Stampede or maybe down to Puerto Rico and try to break in, once he'd learned everything he could from Walter.

But after the third straight month of landing on his constantly-taped-together collarbone, being thrown out of his apartment for nonpayment of rent (because all of his money is going to Walter), and _still_ no heat in the goddamn gym, Paul calls it quits. Walter rants and raves, but Paul's mind is made up. He wants to be a wrestler, but he can't take this.

Joe catches up to him outside, where he's leaning against the brick and telling himself you can't actually die from a broken collarbone. Joe's wearing a thin windbreaker and shivering through it, but you'll never hear him complain. He's Walter's golden boy, the best of all of them, benches more than Paul, even, and Paul really doesn't want to hear Joe's reassurances right now.

"Fuck off."

"Now, is that any way to treat your boyfriend?" Joe asks, lighting up a cigarette. "You serious back there?"

Paul sighs, stealing a drag off Joe's cigarette and sliding closer to share the body heat. "I can't do it, Joey. I know, it's hard work and I'm supposed to just suck it up and take it, but I don't think I'm learning anything I don't already know. I'm just miserable for no reason."

Joe wraps an arm around him, nodding. "You're too good to give this up completely. Listen, I know a couple people down in Atlanta, working for Dusty in the new World Class group. I'll give you the number. They're always on the hunt for good heels."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

Paul cleans out his locker at the school, gives Joe a last blowjob as a goodbye present, and calls up Terry Taylor. He leaves for Georgia the next day, and while his car breaks down halfway through Maryland, he makes it by the weekend tapings.

(Later, when they're both working for Cornette, Joe Laurer never lets Paul forget that, if it hadn't been for him, there would be no Paul Levesque.)

***

1994  
_(joined WCW as Terra Ryzing)_

WCW is like dying and going to wrestling heaven. Jake Roberts. Dusty Rhodes. Randy Savage. Hulk Hogan. Arn Anderson. Sting. And the best of them all, Ric Flair. Paul doesn't think he's so much as breathed since starting in developmental almost a year and a half ago.

It's Dusty himself who calls Paul one afternoon, telling him to be at taping tonight. He says he wants a solid heel to work with Armstrong, and he thinks Paul might be that guy. He says Paul will go over in his very first match.

As Paul learns when he gets to the arena, Dusty's a two-faced son of a bitch, and what he says and what actually gets booked aren't the same thing at all. Paul's got a generic babyface gimmick (Terra Ryzing, and if Paul ever finds out who stuck him with that name, he's going to kick a field goal with their nuts), and he's jobbing clean to Armstrong's pumphandle slam.

Paul does the job, but he's not happy about it.

He goes to the bar with the roster that night. Betwen the Somas, the juice, and the booze, it doesn't take long before he gets completely shitfaced and buries Armstrong and Dusty to whoever will listen (Bagwell, Konnan, and a couple rats hoping for a fuck).

Flair, with Arn and Tully in tow, walks into the bar, and doesn't so much as look Paul's way.

***

1995  
_(joined WWF as Hunter Hearst Helmsley, befriended the Kliq)_

It was probably a bad idea, Paul reflected, to piss off a seven foot tall guy your very first day in a new company.

But all he'd done was tell the truth. His and Waltman's match had, in the words of Pat Patterson, "sucked a dick". That's what happened when you downed four Somas and smoked joint after joint before a match on national television tapings. Paul had gone easy, one Soma and no marijuana, but Waltman had no brakes, and it showed. Paul had tried to say something before the match, but then they were out there in front of the crowd, and not getting his face crushed by the world's worst attempt at a guillotine legdrop was a little more pressing.

So he'd gone to Vince. Wasn't that what you were supposed to do? That's how WCW worked. Everyone tattled to Hogan or Dusty or Bisch about what everyone else was doing, and the office knew who was loyal and who wasn't.

Paul hadn't known that Waltman was Sam Hall's favorite boy toy. Nor had he known that Hall was married to Nash - yes, despite fucking around on him with half the roster - and that Nash was cool with Waltman. He really didn't have time to keep their personal bullshit straight, but he should have. Maybe then Nash wouldn't have gotten pissed at him.

When Nash was pissed at you, that was it. Nash had stroke, and he could tell the entire roster you couldn't work and the entire office that you were a shit-stirrer. Paul found himself unemployed a day and a half after starting in the WWF.

Luckily, he'd heard from some of the boys - this morning, when they were still speaking to him - that Jim Cornette and a couple guys from Philly were starting up a new promotion. Some of the names attached were real familiar to Paul, and they even had half a dozen girls. There were two crazy bitches from Detroit, a Jersey brawler, a Canadian girl who'd actually made it through the Dungeon, a tag-team with a Scottish gimmick, and some high-flyer from Texas, Mickie-something.

It was supposed to be a short-term thing. Just a stopover to build up his new gimmick - New England blueblood, the kind of asshole who'd looked down on him all his life, and ain't that irony for you? - and get in some exposure before getting back into WWF.

Michelle "Mickie Bricks" Hickenbottom sure put a stop to that idea.

Her ring name isn't just a cute way of saying she'll hit you "like a sack of bricks". No, she means it. She's out of her mind; she lays everything out there, kayfabe be damned, works with girls (and guys) twice her size, and all with a manic smile on her face like she can't imagine doing anything else.

She's a hell of a lot braver than him, that's for sure.

***

1997  
_(founds D-Generation X with Shawn Michaels, Chyna, and Ric Rude)_

Michelle is everything he never knew he wanted, everything he should have known he needed. Blonde hair that curls around his fingers when he winds his hands in it as she sucks him off. Blue eyes that spark like a match when she rides him, turn dark and laughing as he pins her to the bed. Bruises from her matches that spread across her skin like tattoos; she has a few small ones, of course - a heart on her ass, a fighter plane on her arm. She likes permanence.

She actually talked him into getting one. It's an ace of diamonds - _"because diamonds are forever, so is Ric Flair, and so are we, baby"_ \- on his hipbone, and she loves to tug his tights or his pants down to look at it.

You'd think she'd have the same devil-may-care attitude toward her career, but she's nothing but serious when it comes to the business. She doesn't tolerate failure. She gets him to study promos and watch hours of tape to find that perfect go-home line, spend that extra ten minutes every day practicing his forearm shots so he can pull them lightning-fast, and talk out his matches beforehand with people other than the bookers.

She doesn't tolerate drugs, either. He's clean for the first time in fifteen years, because of her. She's good at taking care of him; crap at taking care of herself. She flies high, falls hard, and refuses to let him break her fall.

He knows she loves that he still tries.

***

1999  
_(wins his first world heavyweight championship)_

He should have known it wouldn't take long for her to cheat on him. Just because they're married doesn't mean they're not the same people they always were. Their flaws were never secret.

He sublimates. Michelle grandstands. That's how it goes.

He's just surprised she bothered to try and hide it. She waited until a night when she knew he'd be out late at the bar - Cornette likes spending the Tuesday night after Monday tapings recapping and planning with his top guys (Paul, Pat, Shane) at the hotel bar. Paul never gets in before two am.

Except he gets in early this time, and finds her stark naked in their hotel room, covered in bite marks and scratches, with Kristie Andersen three-fingers deep in her pussy. Michelle's cussing a blue streak, and in true Michelle fashion, makes Kristie get her off in front of Paul. Paul throws Kristie out as soon as it's over - it's a shame, she really is more his type than Michelle's, all spiky brown hair and big brown eyes - and turns to his wife for an explanation.

"You cut me up, Paul," Michelle says, unapologetic. "At least with her, I can see the marks."

She's right. He's always been afraid to hurt her physically - afraid of himself, really. He's been clean for a while, but rough sex always reminds him of how much he liked using. You forget how strong you are when you're on drugs. It's only when you wake up sober the next morning that you see the proof spread across some nameless person's skin. He never wants it to be her.

He goes to his knees in front of her, buries his head in her stomach. "Fuck her, if you have to. Fuck whoever you have to, however you have to. Just come back to me. If you don't - I can't - I won't -"

She weaves hands through his hair, kissing his forehead. "I know."

She's always been stronger than him.

"We'll figure it out."

***

2004  
_(teams up with his idol, Ric Flair, in Evolution)_

One of his lifelong dreams occurs on June 12th. For his and Michelle's fifth wedding anniversary, they've got a weekend to themselves in one of Vegas's sweetest penthouses. It's their extremely-belated honeymoon (they'd spent their actual honeymoon flying to New York, tag-teaming against Pat Storm and Jessie Irving in an intergender match, and Michelle ended up with food poisoning from the airplane lunch), and this time, they've gone all-out. Dinner at the Bellagio, and drinks in the lounge.

Paul's wearing pinstripes and Michelle's making Sinatra jokes, playing up her Texas drawl. "This Town" is playing, and he's trying to get her to swing dance, but she's always had two left feet and refuses to embarrass herself. They're just toasting with a couple glasses of Cristal when Ric Flair walks into the bar.

(He'll never tell her just how jealous he is that she spent a night in a bar with Flair in her teens. No matter what kind of sexual favors she tries to bribe him with.)

Michelle walks over right away, dragging him protesting after her. She's always beautiful, but tonight, she's amazing. Skintight silver dress, backless and cut to a half-inch below her ass, diamonds in her ears and that bright smile on her face. Easily the most heartstopping woman in the room, and Flair's attention naturally snaps to her as she approaches him.

"Hey Naitch," she says, "Remember the Hound Dog in San Antonio, back in '84?"

Flair's jaw drops - it's okay, because Paul thinks he's doing the same thing - and he shooes the girls he's with away as he motions to the seats beside him. "No shit. That _was_ you. Mickie fuckin' Bricks. Saw your match last week. That 450 splash of yours scares the hell out of me."

Holy shit, Ric Flair knows his wife's name.

"And you, Levesque," Flair continues. "You're impressive. I can't believe McMahon had you under contract and let you go. I saw you and Douglas go sixty minutes last month in Richmond - seriously, man. Unbelievable."

Holy _shit_. Ric goddamn Flair, whose ability as a heel Paul will never, ever in his life be able to even approximate, knows his name, too.

"I, um - thank you. So much. I can't - wow," Paul stutters, and Michelle holds a hand to his face, the diamond on her finger sparkling under the lights, and kisses him bemusedly.

"He's a bit more coherent on camera," she deadpans. "He means to say that he admires the hell out of you. So do I. And luckily, I'm a hell of a lot smarter than Vince McMahon."

***

2006  
_(reforms DX with best friend Shawn Michaels)_

He can hear her as he hits gorilla, blood trickling from two places at his hairline and half a dozen other places on his body. Cage matches are hell on the body, and Corny had explicitly asked for him and Pat both to blade, it being the swing match in their series of trading the title back and forth. Pat's a great guy, thank God, absolutely the kind of guy you want to be working with when your head's back in your wife's dressing room.

"Get the fuck away from me with that needle, Kenny. I swear to God, I'm fine. I just tweaked it a little."

Said wife who's currently driving half the medical staff completely insane.

The hallway clears without a word. She's the most senior woman in the company, so she gets a room to herself, usually right next to his. He hands his belt to one of the trainers and accepts a towel for the blood, dabbing at a gash on his left arm. He opens the door to the locker room and immediately ducks the roll of gauze Michelle throws right at his head.

"Godfuckingdammit, Paul, I told you not to blade!"

He could point out that he'd told her not to do that spot off the barricade into the crowd last week, and look where _that_ had gotten her, but he keeps his mouth shut on that matter.

"I'm fine," he says, sitting down next to her and urging her to stay still. "You're not. That knee is twice the size it was when I left."

"I was only on it for a minute or two, I swear."

She's lying, but he can't blame her. He wouldn't believe the doctors either, if they told him he'd torn an ACL and wouldn't be wrestling anymore.

You can heal from a lot of injuries in this business. She has. Broken bones and torn muscles and cuts and scrapes and bruises. She just bulldozes right through, and the doctors be damned. But this is different; you can't come back from a second tear on a knee you spent a year rehabbing, and you definitely can't do it at her age.

"I wanted to go forever," she says, hundred-yard stare going hazy, and he laces his fingers through hers.

If anyone deserved to be granted a wish like that, it's Michelle Levesque. Forty-one years old, twenty-five in the wrestling business, and being told she's got to hang it all up one day is almost too much for her to bear. Usually, she bends and doesn't break - now? He can see the cracks.

He can do this. He can be strong for her.

"We'll figure this out. Together. I promise."

**Author's Note:**

> The genderswapped wrestlers are, in order of appearance:
> 
> Joe Laurer = Joanie "Chyna" Laurer  
> Samantha "Sam" Hall = Scott Hall  
> Michelle "Mickie Bricks" Hickenbottom = Shawn Michaels  
> Kristie Andersen = Kurt Angle  
> Patrick Storm = Patricia "Trish Stratus" Stratigias  
> Jessie Irving = Christopher "Chris Jericho" Irvine


End file.
